Dartmouth-designed dinosaurs debut

A Dartmouth company has a contract to produce 52 titles for the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader, interactive pop-up books, based on its popular I’m a Dinosaur television series.

A downtown Dartmouth animation group is spinning off a new company called Funibooks Inc. after scoring a hit with an interactive title for the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader.

The new company is being established to handle anticipated growth in the interactive e-reader sector, Adam Mimnagh, president of Huminah Huminah Animation, said Thursday in an interview.

“We’re right in the middle of completing all the necessary paperwork,” Mimnagh said.

Funibooks will be affiliated with the Dartmouth offices of Huminah, an eight-year-old Nova Scotia producer of broadcast-quality animations and games that also has an office in Hamilton, Ont.

The company employs about 40 people between the two offices.

“We wanted a location in Ontario to be close to the market,” said Mimnagh.

Huminah’s first interactive, pop-up e-reader title was released through Barnes & Noble just a few days ago and is already scoring sales, said Mimnagh.

The Dartmouth company has a contract to produce 52 titles for the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader, all of them interactive pop-up books, based on its popular I’m a Dinosaur television series.

Mimnagh said the company started an interactive animation division about five years ago with an eye on the iPhone, iPad and Android markets.

“When the number of competing apps began to run into the thousands, we started looking elsewhere and began seriously looking at the growing e-reader market.”

The Barnes & Noble contract for an interactive e-reader evolved out of some trade show participation.

“An e-reader is basically a little computer and children enjoy the sort of interaction that is available with traditional pop-up books,” said Mimnagh.

It turns out there is increasing demand for interactive e-reader content from competitors of Barne & Noble in the United States and Canada.

Mimnagh said the market looked good enough to warrant establishing an entirely new company.

Funibooks will adapt various titles in the Huminah library for assorted e-readers and also for the iPad. The new company will also adapt titles to these formats for other production houses.

“Kids can experience the fun of interactive animation while reading,” said Mimnagh.

Funibooks and Huminah will remain in downtown Dartmouth to take advantage of a creative scene emerging there, he said.

The Huminah moniker is a tribute to a classic Jackie Gleason television show in which the lead character resorted to outbursts of “huminah, huminah, huminah” when things weren’t going his way, the company’s website said.